Louis Joseph Vance

“ Here there was always shade by day, thanks to a screen of subtropical foliage, by night a deeper gloom than elsewhere on the veranda, and at all times a better show of privacy.
The engine roared as Summerlad's car swung down the drive, then changed its tune to a thick drone as it took the boulevard, heading away for Beverly Hills. Still Lucinda rested as she was, absently observing the play of street lights on leaves whose stir was all but imperceptible in the softly flowing air.
Impossible to understand herself, to read her own heart, make up her mind.... ”

“ Lucinda said slowly, "that it was you who made the mode of life with which I was content impossible for me. If this life I've taken up here is in some sense a makeshift, it's all I've got to take the place of all I had. And now you'd rob me even of it! And one thing more you forget: If I should give in to your wishes and leave Hollywood today, I would only be doing what you say you want to prevent, confessing by flight that my only real interest in my picture work was my greater interest in Lynn Summerlad. ”

“ Such torrents of motor vehicles brawled through the city channels, the only wonder was that anybody ever walked. Yet it was seldom Lucinda's fortune to view the sidewalks in the heart of town when they were not aswarm with moving masses of the most heterogeneous composition, shuffling, staring, oddly taciturn.
The great body of these seemed to be sober-sided souls in steady circumstances; a bourgeoisie smug and semi-shabby, ignorant of its past, heedless of its future, largely unconcerned with its present; self-dedicated to existences as uninteresting and useful as a cow's. ”

“ All this bickering about "saving" a production whose asininity one esteemed beyond repair as long as one lacked the moral courage to touch a match to its interminable footage of footless photography!
If it hadn't been for that last quarrel with Bellamy, if it were not for seeming to give in to his wishes and thus giving him more encouragement to tamper with her concerns, Lucinda before the end of that first day in the projection-room would have cried off her agreement with Zinn, abandoned the production then and there, pocketed her loss without murmur, and let the looks of it go hang. ”

“ The surprise was so much the more unwelcome, consequently, when on leaving the telephone booth she saw her husband with his hat on the back of his head and his arms full of lavender orchids, wavering irresolutely in the entrance to the Palm Room, surveying with a dashed expression its now all but deserted spaces; a festive spectacle that left no room for surmise as to what he had been up to. And with sickening contempt added to the bitterness already rankling in her heart, Lucinda made hastily for the revolving door. ”

“ After all, there is only one salvation for a man married to a woman cleverer than himself: to do no wrong.
"Oh, if you're going to rake up ancient history——!"
But Lucinda pursued pensively, as if she hadn't heard: "I presume you've got to run after that sort, Bel, because they don't know you as well as I do—can't."
Even a slow man may have wit enough not to try to answer the unanswerable. Bellamy got stiffly to his feet.
"I'll drop in at the Ritz if I can make it."
"Do, dear ... And Bel!" Lucinda rose impulsively and ran to him. "I'm sorry, Bel, I was so catty just now. ”

“ The evening had grown quite dark when a crisp rattle of the telephone startled Lucinda into renewed contact with her surroundings. She found herself in the recess of one of the living-room windows that looked out over the lawn. The book was in her hand. Behind her a door opened, releasing upon the gloom a gush of golden light. Without moving she watched Summerlad, in a dressing-gown hastily thrown on over dress-shirt and trousers, hobble over to the telephone and conduct one end of a short conversation of which her wits made no sense whatever. ”

“ The air grew colder, Lucinda and the Lontaines grateful for the wraps which Summerlad had pressed upon them. In the course of half an hour the car halted on an isolate peak, and all the lowlands lay unfolded to their vision, from the foothills to the sea, a land like a violet pool with a myriad winking facets of blue-white light; as some vast store of diamonds might be strewn by hands of heedless prodigality upon a dark velvet field. ”

“ Would she have been happier married to Dobbin? Was it reasonable to assume that Dobbin would not have developed in the forcing atmosphere of matrimony traits quite as difficult as Bel's to deal with? In this wrong-headed world nobody was beyond criticism, and anybody's faults, condonable though they might seem at a distance, could hardly fail of exaggeration into vices through daily observation at close range. Impossible to imagine any two human creatures living together, after the first raptures had begun to wane, without getting on each other's nerves now and then. ”

“ And then it would be amusing to see Los Angeles under the wing of so well-informed a motion-picture impresario as Lontaine. That afternoon at the Culp studios had been fascinating; how much more so would it be to live for a time in a city that was, at least as Lontaine limned it, one vast open-air studio, to be associated with people who were actually doing something with their lives. What a change from the life that had grown to seem tedious and unprofitable even before Bellamy had made its continuance intolerable! ”

“ In this new association the low spirits lifted which latterly had oppressed the mercurial cameraman; Iturbide chirked up amazingly and made it plain that he looked upon Mr. Day as a man, a brother, and an artistic peer.
Between Wallace Day and Lucinda there was no friction, and under his sympathetic guidance she felt she was doing better work than she had ever hoped to do.
Only Zinn, though he observed with every indication of pleased approval the rapid strides the production was making, was known to wag a head weighted with foreboding and utter dismal croaks. ”

“ And indeed a great part of that indecision at which Lucinda in those days played so daintily was due to the knowledge, unformulated in her consciousness but none the less exercising constant influence on her moods, that she was less in love with Lynn than in love with being loved by Lynn Summerlad the idolized.
In many ways admirable, a fine animal who kept himself always exquisitely fit, intelligent enough to share or seem to share her every taste and prejudice, Lynn had laid a spell upon her mind no less than on her senses. ”

“ In an interlude of difficulty to beggar all believing, response to Lucinda's forbearance all at once swept like a great wind over those treacherous emotional shallows, kicking up their still unsettled dregs of hysteria, storming in wild squalls of gratitude, remorse and shame, driving shoreward that frail, crank pleasure-craft which was the soul of Nelly Marquis, leaving it at the last stranded in a slough of self-pity and abasement, where it rested in maudlin wreckage, weeping, lamenting, calling out upon its shabby gods for that they had forsaken it. ”

“ There was a convincing glint of alarm in Lontaine's look. "Never more enthusiastic, more sure of anything than I am of your eventual success. But it's going to mean hard work for both of us, slavery for many months, and hindrances may crop up we ought to be prepared against."
"I shan't mind hard work," Lucinda replied. "In fact, I can't think of anything that I'd find more agreeable than consciousness of at least trying to do something worth while with my life. As for disappointments, I don't expect much, so I can't be very hard hit if everything doesn't turn out as happily as one might wish." ”

“ Two Lucinda Druces crossed the sidewalk and passed through the turnstile of bright metal and plate-glass which served as a door at the Forty-sixth street entrance to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel—the one perceptible to mortal vision a slender and fair young person costumed in impeccable taste and going her way with that unstudied grace which is the last expression of man's will to make woman a creature whose love shall adorn him. ”

“ What can a woman do to round out her life when she's lost her husband and is fit for nothing but to be a wife?"
"She can find another husband. Many do."
"Marry again!" A violent movement of Lucinda's hands abolished the thought. "Never that! I'm through with love for good and all."
"No doubt," agreed the student of law and life. "But are you sure that love is through with you?"
XVI
Willis left for New York on a late afternoon train; and when Lucinda had said good-bye to him at the station, she felt as if she had parted with her one real friend in all the world. ”

“ Mother and I brought her out and rented a bungalow in the foothills, up back of the Hollywood Hotel. One day while I was wandering about I saw a car-load of people in paint and evening clothes stop in front of a house with good-looking grounds. I stopped, too. So did others; quite a crowd collected while they were setting up the camera. Presently a little fellow in riding-breeches, with an eyeshade, a shock of red hair, and more freckles than anybody ever saw on a human map before or since, came weaving through the crowd as if he was looking for somebody. ”

“ She gave a deprecating flutter of hands. "What else can we do?"
Bellamy said with a stubborn shake of his head: "Never without good cause; and as far as I know, Linda's blameless. I'm a pretty hopeless proposition, I know, but not quite so bad as all that."
Amelie sat back, her colour rising. She could not misinterpret the determination in his temper; yet vanity would not permit her to forego one last attempt. "But if she should divorce you?"
"Deal with that when it comes up. Frankly, don't believe it ever will. Don't mean to give Linda any reason I can avoid." ”

“ Studio accommodations were reported never to have been so much in demand on the Coast. Every available stage was doing double duty, two companies crowding their activities wherever possible into a space formerly reserved for one. Neither knew they any rest by night, when belated souls would see the great roofs of glass livid with the incandescence of Cooper-Hewitt tubes, burning like vast green opals against the dense blue-black of early morning skies.
The tidal wave of the cinema craze that in those years swept the world was rearing its golden crest to its giddiest height ”

“ His pursuit of her Lucinda valued at no more than one last effort to salve the hurt her desertion of him had dealt to his vanity. Neither had Daubeney's devotion meant a great deal: being something too familiar through old acquaintance not to be misprized. It had needed some such new conquest as this to make Lucinda think well of herself again; this at least proved her charms not yet passée. Reassurance for which she was disproportionately grateful; and gratitude is commonly the most demoralizing of vices.
Lucinda inclined to approve the style in which Summerlad maintained himself. ”

“ Somewhere a peevish child wailed fitfully for hours on end, somewhere else a man snored as if strangling in his sleep. Till long after midnight noisy feet straggled intermittently to and from the observation car. And once Lucinda, at last on the verge of drifting off, started suddenly wide-awake, stabbed to the heart by tardy appreciation of the fact that, now Bel knew where she was bound, she could not be sure of finding even Reno a refuge from his persistence, his importunities. ”

“ When it was time to return to the Alexandria, Summerlad insisted on driving them home himself; and as they drew near to Hollywood swung the car sharply off the highroad, and took a by-way leading into the foothills. In a few minutes more they had left behind every hint of civilization, other than the well-metalled way they travelled, and were climbing a road that wound snakily up precipitous mountainsides, threaded unholy gulches, or struck boldly across spine-like ridges from which the ground, clothed in chaparral, fell dizzily away on either hand into black gulfs of silence. ”

“ And it is by this that the potential artistic stature of Linda Lee is to be reckoned, that in this the young beginning of her career she had already learned, what many who walk with the great ones of the screen have never learned and are incapable of learning, to think of her work before herself, to esteem her rôle as something less than the story which gave it excuse for being, to hold the welfare of the picture as a picture more important than her own. ”

“ Lucinda insisted, rising: "it is late, and I want to wake up early, I don't want to miss anything of this wonderful country."
"You won't see anything in the morning but desert, the edge of the Mojave."
"But we've been in the desert all afternoon and I adore it."
"Oh, these Arizona plains! they're not real desert; they're just letting on; give them a few drinks and they'll start a riot—of vegetation. But the Mojave's sure-enough he-desert: sand and sun, cactus and alkali. I'm much more interesting, I'm so human." ”

“ Bellamy was not accustomed to see through women at so young a stage of intimacy; that came later, came surely; but never before had it come so soon. And in a little quake of dread he wondered if it were because he had grown old beyond his years, too aged in sentimental tippling to have retained the capacity for generous credulity of his younger years. Or was it that the woman's insincerity had so eaten out her heart, no technical perfection could lend persuasion to her playing, her caresses potency? ”

“ Kansas City was already the idle menace of a dimming dream. Awkward but unavoidable explanations, haltingly offered, had been accepted without question: a manifestation of tactful sympathy which had not only won Lucinda's heart completely but, working together with her reluctance to proceed to Reno before she could feel reasonably sure of being suffered to live there unmolested, had influenced her to agree to go on with the Lontaines to Los Angeles; whither (she was tacitly led to infer) his motion-picture interests had peremptorily called Lontaine. ”

“ Bending over the table, his face glowing as he illustrated his meaning with an animated play of hands: though his words were all for Lontaine. Summerlad's consciousness was constant to Lucinda, his quick eyes were forever seeking hers.... Hard hit and making no secret of it.
Not that it mattered, more than for the good it did one's self-esteem to be respectfully if openly adored by a personable young man whom one found agreeable. Vanity had been sorely sprung by Bellamy's sacrifice of his wife's love to his appetite for the cheap excitement of flirting with women of cheap emotions. ”